CIA's acting director steps into harsh light

WASHINGTON - Harrison Ford has filled John McLaughlin's job in the movies, but in real life, the CIA's bespectacled, cerebral deputy director has stayed so well cloaked that few outside the shadows of intelligence gathering know him.

That started to change last week with President Bush's announcement that McLaughlin would take over as the agency's acting director in July when George Tenet leaves the job after seven years.

McLaughlin moves up at a critical time for the Central Intelligence Agency and 14 other agencies that make up the nation's intelligence apparatus.

Senior members at various intelligence agencies caution that they see a series of high-profile events this summer that could become attractive targets for terrorists. They worry that al-Qaida network or its allies might try to strike the United States in a way to replicate the political and economic impact of March's train bombings in Madrid.

Officials close to McLaughlin describe him as meticulous, professorial and cerebral, in many ways a contrast to the more gregarious Tenet. John Brennan, director of the federal Terrorist Threat Integration Center, has called McLaughlin Tenet's alter ego.

Tenet, who sometimes chews unlit cigars, is known for throwing an arm around a colleague walking down the hall.

McLaughlin, called "Merlin" by his peers, can be spotted walking around with rubber bands on his wrists, used for tricks. He can turn a $1 bill into other denominations. He wowed students at a Northern Virginia high school by tearing a Washington Post into a dozen pieces, then putting it back together seamlessly.

As Tenet announced his impending departure to CIA personnel, he described his replacement as "a man of magical warmth."

McLaughlin has filled in for Tenet for this assignment when the director was unavailable. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said McLaughlin is someone the president "knows well and trusts."

"The most important thing is that there's a fine professional in John McLaughlin, who has the president's support and confidence," Rice told Fox News Sunday.

A Virginia resident, 61-year-old McLaughlin is married with two children.

Since 1972, he has worked his way up the ranks of the CIA. He was an analyst for European and Russian issues before rising to deputy director for intelligence in 1997. By 2000, he had become Tenet's right hand, as deputy director of central intelligence.

"We are forced each day to take risks - in both operations and analysis. And by definition, with risk comes the possibility of mistake, even failure," he said in a September speech. "That is the nature of our business. The certain and the easy we leave to others."

McLaughlin told the audience that Ford has played his job in the movies. Ford's character, Jack Ryan, was the CIA's acting deputy director for intelligence in Clear and Present Danger.

"The real thing is better," McLaughlin told his audience. "Rarely as flashy, never as lucrative, but vastly more rewarding."

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